Army of Bloggers

The program’s first volunteer was Sandrine Pitousi, 31, from Kfar
Maimon, situated five kilometers from Gaza. "I heard about the project
over the radio and decided to join because I’m living in the middle of
the conflict," she said.

Before hanging up the phone prematurely following a Color Red
rocket alert, Pitousi, who immigrated to Israel from France in 1993,
said she had some experience with public relations from managing a
production company.

"During the war, we looked for a way to contribute to the effort,"
the ministry’s director general, Erez Halfon, told Haaretz. "We turned
to this enormous reservoir of more than a million people with a second
mother tongue." Other languages in which bloggers are sought include
Russian and Portuguese.

Halfon said volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their
contact details by e-mail, at media@moia.gov.il, will be registered
according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry’s
media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web
sites deemed "problematic."

Within 30 minutes of announcing the program, which was approved by
the Foreign Ministry on Sunday, five volunteers were already in touch,
Halfon said.